376 SKETCHES IN PROSE. 



out coffee and waiting on children (as father is too busy talk- 

 ing to attend to the latter), in baking cakes and in trotting 

 back and forth from table to stove. Occasionally she is stimu- 

 lated to further exertion by remarks such as, the cakes are 

 getting pale, or they are as heavy as lead, or cold as ice ; or, 

 what ails the coffee ; it won't kill anybody with strength ; or, 

 it would bear an iron wedge, point downward ; or, that it took 

 his mother to make buckwheat cakes or good coffee. Almost 

 fagged out, she sees sausage gravy spilled on the new table- 

 cloth ; the children visitors upset coffee on the same, or drop 

 victuals on the floor, and vary the sport by breaking two or 

 three gilt-edged china cups and saucers. With a sigh of relief 

 she sees the appetites of the guests show signs of being 

 satiated, and finally their jaws stop wagging. They arise and 

 seek that haven of refuge, the parlor, leaving the cook alone 

 with the dirty dishes and cold cakes. She eats a few of these — 

 the cakes, not the dishes — and after an hour spent washing up 

 the latter, and getting three or four beds ready, she hastily 

 spruces herself up and enters the parlor. She casts envious 

 looks at the sofa rocking chair, in which father is seated, but 

 he is poor at taking hints, and only leaves it long enough to 

 go to the coal scuttle to spit, as he is a dear lover of the weed, 

 it being good for the teeth. The company is engaged in a 

 spirited conversation, and mother makes desperate efforts to 

 throw in a few remarks, to show, if for nothing else, that she 

 is not the hired girl, but they fall on unsympathetic ears, or, 

 if noticed at all, it is for the correction of some error of state- 

 ment or grammar. As it is soon bedtime, she remarks that 

 the folks must be tired and would like to go to bed ; so she 

 puts them all to rest for the night, giving up her own goose- 

 feather bed, as she expects to take the floor. After this father 

 gives her a little lecture about bothering him about the 

 victuals when he was wanting to talk, and looking so cross and 

 " huffy " at supper-time, when she ought to have been doing 



